Some time ago, I was so consumed with the “what’s next” of my life. I could never fully appreciate what was happening all around me. I wasn’t living in the moment, because I was so occupied by what was ahead of me.

One day, I had had enough. “Lord, can you help me to see the beauty in all things,” I prayed. My prayer was answered. From that day forward, my attention would be drawn towards something different I hadn’t noticed before. Flowers. Trees. Clouds. Colors. People. These were just some of the things that were newly brought to my attention.

By all means, my awareness had been heightened.

As I became more aware of the beauty that surrounded me daily, I also became keenly aware of not-so-beautiful things as well. Poverty, senseless killings, the lack of integrity among everyday people, strife, war, wasted resources, the state of the have-nots and the like were beginning to eat me alive.

But recently, this dawned on me: When I prayed for awareness, I was thinking of only being aware of the cute, pretty and loveliness of life. It doesn’t quite work that way. Although I received what I prayed for, I also got so much more. I had to decide what I was going to focus on. I can still be aware of the issues of today’s world. I have a responsibility to help change things in any way that I can. But, I also have a self-promise to uphold my happiness as well by focusing on the lovely things that I see each day. A dual responsibility, if you will.

At breakfast the other day, hindsight came up. In fact, the statement was said that, “Hindsight is 20/20.” It can be thought of as being beautiful. Yeah-hindsight is beautiful. Hindsight affords us the opportunity to see things crystal-clearly, no longer being in the situation.

Merriam-Webster defines hindsight as,”the knowledge and understanding that you have about an event only after it has happened.” Wow: only after it has happened. Why can’t things be obvious while I am going through it (that question pains me to even type)? who knows: maybe things are obvious and I just choose to see what I want to.

I’ve learned so many lessons in hindsight. Why couldn’t I have had these epiphanies on the front end? Isn’t there value in foresight? God only knows why I didn’t see what I was supposed to see until after it happened.

One of my greatest challenges these days is to shift my focus from hindsight to current awareness. I’m drawing a blank as to how I will go about this paradigm shift. I just know that I have to be present in each moment, learning all that I can along the way. The great part about it all is that I can improve upon this daily! It doesn’t have to happen overnight. What a relief!

Like this:

The other day I was watching a documentary about drumming and Horacio Hernandez said something that stuck with me. He said,”We [drummers] have loved this instrument as children and somehow have managed to keep that child alive all this time. So, every time we play, it’s just fun for us.”

Hmm. Keep that child alive all of this time? Wow. That’s a crazy idea.

When I was young, I couldn’t wait to be an adult. No more early bedtimes. No more curfews. No one to tell me what to do and when to do them. It’s amazing how ignorant and down-right crazy I was! I didn’t anticipate how becoming an adult would present such a civil war inside myself.

The thing I’ve learned most about kids is that kids are honest, are oblivious to caution and are fun-loving beings. They are, in fact, oblivious to many things. Children like what they like, and that’s that. They dive head first into whatever they’re doing, and are not concerned about anyone else while they do it. They exude love, and passion in its purest form. They truly dance as though no one is looking.

I admire those adults who have managed to keep their “inner child”alive. But it’s not easy. On occasion, I have fought to keep my “inner child” in tact. In other ways, pieces of my child-like self have fallen faint, like a distant memory. Life has a satirically funny way of doing that to us adults. It’s as though a rule of being an adult requires you to lose your “mini-me”. My personal prayer is that those dormant piece of the child-like me would awaken, restoring the free spirit of my youth.

Friends, try your best to keep your younger you alive. I guess it’s true what I read once: “Keep vigilant watch over your heart;that’s where life starts.”

We live in a generation of absolute statements (funny how that sentence is indeed absolute itself). For today’s absolution, we look towards dreams. I hear often, “Having a dream isn’t enough. You have to have a goal, a plan and execute.” Then it will be presumably enough, right? While I am a supporter of methodical plans and such, I don’t think that dreams get enough credit.

But what if you can’t dream?

I am convinced that without dreams, you are living a meaningless existence. I say this because I was once the guy with no dreams. They had died a horrible death at the hands of my depression. I couldn’t seem to make myself feel any better, let alone dream. My days were filled with a heavy, dark feeling everyday (squelching what little was left of my dreams). From that point on, dreams weren’t in my vocabulary. It also didn’t help that I was drowning in self pity. That time in my life represented an existence and not life. I was alive but I wasn’t living. I was existing.

In time (and with an onslaught of help), I was able to dream again. It was slow at first, but I slowly awakened out of my comatose-like sleep. This made me feel alive! In time, my dreams became more vivid and eventually I realized that I could attain those dreams. Here’s the kicker: After I achieved one dream, I simultaneously got the notion that I could try my hands at another….and another….and another. Essentially, I got more courage.

Today, there are some amazing things happening in my life, that I never dreamt of happening to me. But I know that it all began with having one dream (and then going after it).

Like this:

It has been a while since I last posted. I purposely took a break from most social media. It was taking over my life. I would find myself staring at my phone a lot throughout the day. It wasn’t good. I wasn’t having a great time on social media anyway. I was allowing what I saw to determine what I should be doing. No topic was off limits: relationships, business, success and the like. It’s amazing how seeing the same type of things over and over again can give you the idea that your life is inadequate.

In other words, subliminally it was telling me how to think. I remember when I thought more for myself. Crazy right?

So, the social media break was much-needed. Now, I focus on the things that are most important to me. Family, love and helping others is just the tip of the iceberg (and that list may grow depending on the stage of my life).

But that social media “trap” I fell into still has me unsettled, more than a bit. How could I be so cautious about most things, but not about that? I mean, it is true that you “are what you eat,” and I was eating a lot of junk food. Don’t get me wrong: social media has its perks, but that’s not what I’m talking about at the moment. The totality of social media is not remotely my life. But it goes a bit deeper than that.

I had to come to understand a few things. Firstly, people put their best-foot-forward in most situations. People rarely post things that put themselves (or those they love) in a bad light. I haven’t read a post entitled, “It’s Monday people! I hope your day is as jacked up as my life is! #nopeace #nolove #effmylife #effyourstoo.” With that being said, we aren’t privy to the dark times that many people face (but I wasn’t thinking about all of this as I was perused through status updates). Does it mean that people aren’t experiencing challenging times? It most certainly doesn’t mean that. It just means that people are more selective with what they post.

Secondly, we live in the world of absolutes. This means that people post memes that sometimes are polar opposites. Statements like,”If you’re not for me, then you’re against me,” for example. Or maybe this one: “If you can’t hunt, or change a tire, you should cut your beard off because you’re not a real man.” What? Are people serious? These quotes are so ridiculous that they’re laughable.

Lastly, we’re all in search of the same, basic things out of life. We all want to be loved. We all want to know that we matter to someone else. We all want to be happy. That means that we’re more alike than we are different. We’re all just human.

So, I guess in a round-about-way, I learned how to not take social media so seriously. Instead, I’ll choose to hold dear those things I cherish most.

Like this:

My dad was a drummer. He grew up playing in church. There was a boy named Artie that watched him play. Artie played when my dad decided not to play any longer. My older brother Maurice played drums intermittently while Artie was the main drummer. Then, when Artie went into the Army, Maurice played drums. When Maurice went off to college, I played.

While all of the drum lineage was unfolding, I enjoyed every minute of it. It was so exciting to watch Artie come up to the drums with his dark-siders on and play. When he played, the atmosphere changed. I ate it up.

There was this one time at our church’s annual Christmas Play, that Artie wasn’t on the drums (and my brother was nowhere to be found). They were singing, “Why don’t you pray for me, sometime.” I grabbed the sticks and played my little heart out. It was the last song of the evening, so it was very short, but I was excited to play.

[I feel giddy just thinking about that moment.]

While it would be years until I finally got a chance to play for our church “full time,” I didn’t care. I enjoyed just being able to hear all the musical sounds in that place, as a kid.

I paid no mind of the time between Artie and me playing because I enjoyed it so much. Although it could be counted as waiting time, I didn’t care.

I was reminded about this childhood story, as I reflected on the part of my journey that has me frustrated nowadays. I have become somewhat impatient (I alluded to this in my last post: read about it here). The biggest lesson I have learned from “me” back then is to have fun while I wait.

While this passage doesn’t exactly sum up my feelings, it did get me thinking about my success. I am generally, genuinely happy for people who are doing well (in what I want to do). I cheer people on because I like seeing folks happy, excelling at what they want. My problem is that I want to excel, too. It’s not a sense of entitlement (at least I don’t think so), but a yearning to excel.

When I see others excel, sometimes I wonder when or if I’ll excel too.

Let me say this: I expect a lot of me (as I’ve been told by my wife). I don’t think it’s too much, but I’ve been told to “sit the f*ck down somewhere,” on occasion (LOL). When I think about my new business, I feel as though I should be doing “this” or “that.” Whenever I have down time, I’m always asking myself,”What can I be doing right now?” I do too much sometimes: I get it.

But reading this scripture reminded me in the most in-your-face yet tender manner that I just have to relax and rely on God. However hard it is for me, I shouldn’t be worried about what someone else is doing. Just relax. It’s cool.

Besides, how do I know that I’m NOT doing what I’m supposed to be doing at this very minute? Maybe I am.

Like this:

We all want to think that what we’re doing is the right thing. We all have experienced things in life that have changed us forever. Our idea of what is normal can be largely based on what we see in the media (television, social or otherwise). The idea is that we are trying to have a sense of normalcy. But what is normal?

I think that the great secret is that everyone is pretending to be normal (to some degree). There’s nothing normal about anyone, but we all fell into the trap (earlier on) to behave “normally.”

Last week, I went to the grocery store. I put on my Philadelphia Eagle’s shirt and off I went (I had on pants too, you bum)! When I got out of the car, I noticed a gentleman who was collecting carts afar off, as he started talking about the Eagles to himself (I realized that he probably had seen my shirt).

[Time out: What I’ve noticed about this grocery store is that the people in charge of organizing carts appear to have special needs (or to be not normal). Time in.]

He began speaking to me by saying,”What I like about the Eagles, and my name is Paul by the way…..” He attempted to partially show me his name badge, took off his glove and gave me a fist bump. It was then that we entered into deep discussion about the Eagles.

While he spoke favorably about my sports team, that’s not what I admired most. Although he may not have followed social norms (by talking within a certain decibel level), I enjoyed the experience very much. What I liked most was his ability to be Paul, and I instantly loved him for it.

We talked for about two or three minutes and then he walked away, abruptly ending the conversation (albeit I was in mid-sentence).

Although my day was visually gloomy (due to never-ending rain from the impending storm), Paul lit up my day.

Thank you Paul for conveying honesty and acceptance by simply talking to this Eagles’ fan. I love you, brother.